


We Are Sunshine

by rosaliepennington



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-13
Updated: 2016-02-13
Packaged: 2018-05-20 02:19:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5988769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosaliepennington/pseuds/rosaliepennington
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A short & sweet Reylo High School AU fic, for all the warm & fuzzies. :)</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Are Sunshine

The sun beat down on her cheeks and her forehead. Rey inhaled the spring breeze and let it out s-l-o-w-l-y. Rey felt like she was drowning in sunlight, that she was liquid sunshine. Her back flat on the grass outside her high school, her head propped up on her backpack. It was April, and winter in cold, stark Minnesota was finally dying in the warmth of spring.

This was something she loved more than anything about where she’d lived since she was born. Minnesota was home to the extremes: terrible winters, beautiful summers. Scorching days and blinding snowstorms.

But today, today was a shaky middle-ground, a precious few seconds of perfect.

“Rey?”

A tentative voice.

Rey opened her eyes, and the sun filled them. She sat up quickly, dizzyingly quickly, and turned to her right as Ben Solo sat down next to her in the grass.

“Hi,” Rey muttered.

“Skipping lunch, are we?”

Ben’s voice was shaky, but his words were cocky.

It was always like this.

Rey wondered why.

“Yeah,” she said.

Ben was in her Physics class. She was good at it. He wasn’t. She knew this because the teacher was always calling on the people who weren’t paying attention and humiliating them, and Ben was one of those people. He had a sketchbook, and to her knowledge, he spent all his time between the folds of its pages in grey graphite crosshatching.

They’d talked three times this year. Their sophomore year.

Once, it was about a pencil.

The second time, it was about the assignment.

This was the third.

But Rey would have to call herself crazy if it turned out Ben hadn’t been staring at her for half of this school year.

And she’d by lying if she didn’t say she hung on his every, “Um,” his every, “I don’t know,” his every, “I didn’t get that one.”

She’d by lying if she didn’t say that she was in love with his dark brown eyes, and the things that they did to her stomach thrilled her.

She’d be lying if she didn’t say she couldn’t smell his cologne, something different than the suffocating and intense ones most sixteen-year-old boys wore.

She’d by lying if she said she hadn’t spent more than one Spanish class with her chin in her hands, eyes aimed at the dull white ceiling, daydreaming about sitting in the passenger seat of his red truck, flying down a highway in midsummer.

Her heart was already doing flips now, her cheeks turning red as the blushing sunset-colored lipstick her mother wore.

She’d be lying if she’d said she hadn’t been hoping he’d shrug off his hoodie when she shivered, just once.

This hope came true.

Now Ben was sitting there, gorgeous ebony hair just barely touching his shoulders, his side almost touching her side, wearing a grey t-shirt that probably cost near nothing but looked to her like a three-piece-suit. She wanted nothing more than for him to look at her, to stare at her, the way he stared at his drawings.

Rey didn’t know, though, she didn’t—if Ben was simply being nice in the offer of his coat. At sixteen, she didn’t know a lot of things.

Out of the corner of her eye, she stared at him, indulging herself for a few beautiful moments of joy. But when she brushed aside a strand of her own hair that got in the way of her view of Ben, she was shocked to discover that he was staring back.

Blush, blush, blush.

All four cheeks.

Immediate turning away.

Fingers touching, just barely, in between blades of grass. Gentle gentle gentle, Ben’s fingers. Terrified, touchy, Rey’s. Somehow—she didn’t know how—she wanted to melt into him, to become one with him.

“I hate the cafeteria, too.”

Rey turned to glance at him again, but couldn’t—it was like staring into a star, into the sun. Shyly, she looked down.

“Is—is something wrong?” Ben said, pulling his fingers away.

Rey forced herself to look him in the eye, and when she did, she found an irresistible pull. His eyes were like warm, melting chocolate. The gentle curl of his dark hair.

God.

She felt it like a gravitational pull, and she was leaning, and he was leaning—and then his full lips were touching hers so, so softly.

Finally. Finally.

It felt like a first drink of water in the desert, like a cup of coffee after a bad night’s sleep. It felt like an epiphany, it felt like relief, it felt so, so right, like this was what she’d been missing all her life and yet she couldn’t believe it, couldn’t yet believe this was real life.

Her hands moved naturally to his neck, and she felt one of his hands on her shoulder.

He pulled away after a second, and stumbled over his words as he said, “Is this—this okay?”

Rey could only nod and pull him closer again, craving the warmth in his lips. He responded, and Rey couldn’t help but think that she felt as if they were turning into liquid sunshine.


End file.
